In Scotland the Court of Session authorised treatment for two Jehovah’s Witness children after their parents refused blood. In Malta a Valletta court again adjourned the case of a 15-year-old from Bari, held over a school bomb alert.

Politiken published Noah Rosendal’s memoir of Faderhuset, the Danish Christian group. Beobachter returned to Oskar Muggli, the Swiss cult leader. European listings carried Marina Klauser’s documentary on Methernitha.

Emily Watson told Variety the School of Economic Science in London tried to stop her Oscar-nominated part in Breaking the Waves. RTBF and La Libre reported a Scientology-linked stall at a city-subsidised festival in Brussels. BBC London published a year-long sextortion account.

Court of Session authorises treatment after blood refusal

Lord Braid, sitting in the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, authorised “potentially life-saving” treatment for three children after their parents refused consent, the BBC reported on 20 August. Two actions came from Greater Glasgow Health Board and one from Borders Health Board.

Two of the children were Jehovah’s Witness boys whose parents refused blood transfusions. A 13-year-old with medulloblastoma, an aggressive brain tumour, and severe autism could not decide for himself. A three-year-old needed surgery for a kidney blockage and also had sickle cell disease.

Lord Braid said clinicians had gone “above and beyond” to avoid blood products and would use them only as a last resort.

The third case was a 10-year-old girl bitten by the family dog. After surgery, doctors recommended a tetanus injection and immunoglobulin. Her parents refused, citing “simplicity, nature and mindful choices”.

The judge authorised the injections and ordered her parents to bring her back to hospital. He said each child came from “loving parents”, but welfare outweighed the objections.

Valletta court adjourns the Bari teenager’s hearing again

A Valletta court again adjourned the case of a 15-year-old from Bari held in a Maltese youth facility over a school bomb alert, Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported on 19 August. Freedom Times covered the detention in the 3–9 August column, when a Maltese court had listed this 19 August hearing.

Judge Tanya Sammut listed the next date for 26 August. This was the third evidence hearing. No decision was taken on bail.

The prosecution had called two of his schoolmates. One did not join the hearing by video. The other, a girl, spoke for 15 minutes. The judge treated that as too short to stand as evidence and did not accept the testimony.

Italy’s ambassador Valentina Setta and consul Santo Purello attended. The lead inspector told the court that files from the boy’s computer pointed to 764, which the paper described as an international network of violent extremism and cyberbullying. His phone was seized the same day.

The paper said he has been in the Maltese youth prison for almost three months, in isolation. He is allowed one hour a week with other detained minors, during practical sessions run by social workers and psychologists. For the rest of the week his only contact is with staff. The authorities cite alleged 764 links as the reason.

Rosendal’s memoir of Faderhuset

Politiken on 22 August published Noah Rosendal’s memoir of growing up in Faderhuset, a Danish Christian group. Rosendal, 22, writes in Barn af Faderhuset that he did not go to ordinary school. He describes physical punishment, exorcism and indoctrination.

The paper said children there were treated as born evil, and that evil spirits were driven out with beatings. The book criticises the authorities for not intervening over neglect.

Bente Boserup, chair of Børnerådet, Denmark’s national children’s council, has worked for 18 years for better help for children and young people from the group. She told Politiken she was sure Faderhuset was not the only place where psychological and physical violence was carried out with religious books in hand, and that it still happens.

»Noahs historie sætter fem tykke streger under, at det ikke var godt nok, og at myndighederne burde have gjort noget mere«

Künzer on leaving Oskar Muggli

Beobachter on 21 August published Frederik Jötten’s interview with “Urs Künzer”, now 80, one of the last people to speak about the Swiss cult leader Oskar Muggli. Freedom Times reported Künzer’s first public account in the 10–16 August column.

Muggli styled himself an apostle. The paper said he cheated farmers, coerced women into sex, and terrorised families in Switzerland.

Künzer said that three weeks before Muggli’s death, on a walk, the leader offered the then 17-year-old the post of deputy. Künzer refused.

«Gefühle wurden bei uns systematisch unterdrückt»

He said Muggli then went into a follower’s room and locked the door. Künzer asked why lock it, and said he believed Muggli was assaulting the woman. That, he said, confirmed he had to leave.

«Warum hätte er sonst die Tür abschliessen sollen?» «Das war für mich eine weitere Bestätigung, dass ich mit Muggli und seiner Sekte brechen musste.»

Scientology stall at a city-funded Brussels festival

A “Non à la drogue, Oui à la Vie” stand at Percusounds on Place de la Monnaie, 14–16 August, was linked to the Church of Scientology’s Foundation for a Drug-Free World, RTBF and La Libre reported. RTBF said the free festival, in its tenth year, drew more than 15,000 people and 14 groups.

The City of Brussels, which subsidised the event with €7,000, said the public-space permit was not for a Scientology stand. The cabinet of culture alderwoman Nawal Ben Hamou said the city had reminded the organiser of the rules.

Organiser Paolo Terrabrasil told RTBF he had accepted a volunteer’s offer of a drugs-prevention stall and learned the link only on the Sunday. He said they felt they had been deceived.

C’était une erreur. Nous aurions dû être plus vigilants.

Lotte Stoops, of Ecolo-Groen, said the stand was not a one-off and had appeared at the Afrodisiac festival in the Bois de la Cambre for at least two years. She said she would raise it at the first autumn council.

Klauser’s film on Methernitha, now listed on RTS2

Freedom Times reported Blick’s August coverage of Marina Klauser’s four-part documentary Le faiseur d’anges, on the Methernitha cult and its founder, Paul Baumann. The Locarno premiere ran in the 10–16 August column. Blick said the French-language version is already on Play Suisse.

Baumann, known inside the group as “Vatti”, was convicted in 1976 at Thun of sexual offences against minors and sentenced to seven years. He died in 2011, aged 94. Methernitha still exists at Linden in the Bernese Emmental.

RTS2 is due to show the four parts on Monday 24 August, from 20:40 Swiss time (CEST). Further parts follow at 21:30, 22:25 and 23:20. Télé 7 Jours listed repeats on 30 August from 22:55, and in the early hours of 31 August.

Emily Watson on the School of Economic Science

Emily Watson, chairing the jury at the Sarajevo Film Festival and receiving an honorary Heart of Sarajevo, told Variety she grew up in the London School of Philosophy and Economic Science, a group she called a religious cult. The magazine said it teaches conservative values and strict rules on gender and sex.

“Parts of it were very happy, and parts of it were very strange.”

In 1996 she starred as Bess McNeill in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, a young woman in a religious community in the north of Scotland. Variety said the role was her international break and brought her first Oscar nomination.

The School of Economic Science summoned her and told her, “in no uncertain terms”, not to do the film. She went ahead. The film opened at Cannes that year.

“That moment was a rupture. This is where I’d grown up, where my friends were, and I walked away.”

She said that is why the film works:

“I was like a piece of wire being unplugged.”

BBC London on a year of sextortion

BBC London Investigations published the account of “Emma”, a London woman now in her 20s. She was 17 when a 26-year-old man posing as a 17-year-old boy secretly captured intimate images on a video call and used them to control her for a year.

“If I were to end the relationship, he would expose them.”

After the first call he told her the images would be deleted only if she met a “friend”, who was the same man. She said she was drugged and raped. She feared the pictures would ruin her father and his career.

Childline recorded 1,043 counselling sessions in the year to March 2026 that mentioned threats to share sexual images, 52 per cent more than the year before. The National Crime Agency’s CEOP Safety Centre recorded 1,473 reports of financially motivated sexual extortion in 2025.

An old killing, and “Sekta” in Serbian politics

Naslovi.net on 17 August carried a Telegraf recap, 31 years on, of an 18 August 1995 killing in Jászberény, Hungary. Freedom Times reported the same case last week.

A man walked into a police building at 08:00 and asked to be arrested, saying he had strangled his wife that morning. The headline asked whether a cult from Serbia had been a trigger.

Separately, on 22 August B92 reported that Sandra Božić, a vice-president of Serbia’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party, replied on X to the account “VGGŠ u blokadi”. The account had repeated:

“Mafija vlada Srbijom!”

She wrote:

“Sekta. Jezivo!”

The paper said she compared the protesters’ behaviour to that of a cult.

Beyond Europe

These items were reported on outlets we monitor. The events themselves sit outside Europe and the UK.

US judge finds Mike Jeffries fit for trial

US Judge Nusrat Choudhury ruled former Abercrombie & Fitch chief executive Mike Jeffries, 81, competent to stand trial on sex-trafficking and prostitution charges, the BBC reported on 21 August. The ruling reverses an earlier finding of incompetence. A court last year had cited dementia and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The 150-page judgment cited medical records and more than 21 hours of recordings from 109 calls. The judge wrote that Jeffries had a “rational and factual understanding” of the proceedings.

Trial is listed for 26 October, with sittings from 13:00 to 17:00 and regular breaks. Jeffries, his partner Matthew Smith and alleged middleman James Jacobson have pleaded not guilty. A guilty verdict carries a maximum sentence of life. The case followed a 2023 BBC investigation.

Elliott tells Icac a cult took over the NSW Liberals

Former New South Wales Liberal minister David Elliott told the Independent Commission Against Corruption on 21 August that branch stacking by the religious right left him thinking a cult had taken over the party, The Guardian reported.

“a cult had taken over the party”

He named an Opus Dei-linked faction around Dominic Perrottet.

The same inquiry is examining alleged illegal donations tied to the Reformers. Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney was sacked the same day after the board cited a loss of confidence.

Elliott said he was followed by a private investigator and received death threats after opposing a Cherrybrook development by Jean Nassif.

Mark Lee denies he joined a cult

Mark Lee, formerly of the K-pop group NCT, used Instagram Live on 20 August to apologise for photographs of a Confederate-flag T-shirt first circulated on 23 June, Complex reported. His label, Upper Room, had already said the garment was chosen as a vintage wardrobe item.

He addressed Black fans and said the shirt did not reflect who he is. He also pushed back on what he called “silly TikTok videos” alleging he had joined a religious cult.

“I am not in a cult. I’m a Christian, and I always have been.”

He lives in New York and is working on music through Upper Room.

“Spiralism” called a chatbot echo, not a cult

Dagens PS on 19 August described “spiralism”, a label used for chatbot conversations that circle recursion, resonance and spiral imagery. AI researcher Adele Lopez estimated about 10,000 accounts described similar experiences in 2025.

Psychiatrist Joe Pierre, writing in Psychology Today, treated it as a chatbot echo rather than a religion or cult.

“It is what happens when people feed enough nonsense into a language model and get nonsense back.”

Demsas on Murphy’s “cult of the common good”

Jerusalem Demsas, in The Argument on 18 August, answered US senator Chris Murphy’s book Crisis of the Common Good. Murphy writes of a “cult of the common good”.

Demsas used a 1639 Massachusetts price-gouging case, and the later fate of Ann Hibbens, a Boston woman later hanged as a witch, to argue that politics is not where people should be asked to find meaning.

Source citations

Programme-Television (France): “Le faiseur d’anges - Documentaire (2026) : diffusions TV, streaming, replay”, 7 Jan 2026.

BBC (UK): “Judge ruled children could have ‘life-saving’ treatment after parents refused”, 20 Aug 2026.

BBC (UK): “Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries competent enough for trial, judge rules”, 21 Aug 2026.

BBC (UK): “Sextortion: I was secretly filmed, then controlled for a year”, 20 Aug 2026.

Naslovi.net (Serbia): “Sekta iz Srbije bila okidač za jezivo ubistvo? Zločin o kojem komšije i danas pričaju, detalji su strašni”, 17 Aug 2026.

B92 (Serbia): “Sandra Božić oštro reagovala na poruku blokadera: “Sekta. Jezivo!””, 22 Aug 2026.

Corriere del Mezzogiorno (Italy): “Quindicenne in cella da tre mesi a Malta: udienza rinviata per ascoltare altri testimoni, il ragazzo resta in carcere. La disperazione della famiglia”, 19 Aug 2026.

Politiken (Denmark): “Myndigheder overser kristne sekter: »Hele tankesættet om skyld, helvede og frygt for dommedag forfølger mange«”, 22 Aug 2026.

Beobachter (Switzerland): “Ein Schweizer Sektenführer raubte ihm die Kindheit”, 21 Aug 2026.

Variety (US): “Emily Watson Says Growing Up in a Religious Cult Almost Stopped Her From Starring in ‘Breaking the Waves’: ‘I Was Like a Piece of Wire That Had Been Unplugged’”, 19 Aug 2026.

Complex (US): “Ex-NCT Member Mark Lee Apologizes for Wearing Confederate Flag Shirt, Shut Down Cult Rumors”, 22 Aug 2026.

The Guardian (UK): “Former NSW Liberal minister tells Icac ‘cult took over the party’”, 21 Aug 2026.

RTBF (Belgium): “‘Nous aurions dû être plus vigilants’ : comment la Scientologie a infiltré un festival musical place de la Monnaie”, 21 Aug 2026.

La Libre (Belgium): “Comment l’Église de Scientologie a infiltré un festival subsidié par la ville de Bruxelles : “C’était une erreur””, 22 Aug 2026.

Dagens PS (Sweden): ““Spiralism” – har AI skapat en egen sekt?”, 19 Aug 2026.

The Argument (US): “No, Senator Murphy, I don’t want to join your cult.”, 18 Aug 2026.